A negative report could generate the opposite though. Are they ready to bet the new $12M+ on that?
Then also if they compensate him, not sure how unbiased others will think (and we are talking about perception here) the study will be.
Slava at RethinkDB here. Yes, we are.
I disagree; it all depends on how they act upon it.
So worst case scenario he finds something deeply flawed. What does RethinkDB do? Work to fix it while communicating and being responsive to the development community. Show developers that you're humble and, more importantly, you listen and fix things. That would generate a good amount of good will, in my opinion.
Everyone makes mistakes - what matters is what you do to discover and fix them.
Right now I'd trust Aphyr more than any other analyst, consultant, or full-time employee (with employment to lose) to give truly impartial judgement.
It's even harder to square with the appearance of impartial judgment. What if a product is honestly great? If we decide that he's being fair because he says both positive and negative things, he has an incentive to create the appearance of fairness rather than actual fairness.
There's a reason that systems where truth is important (e.g., legal proceedings, medicine, science) have complicated rules around conflicts of interest. I hope he finds a way to find funding that doesn't put either his judgment or his reputation at risk. Consider, e.g., Consumer Reports: they get money from their subscribers, not advertisers or manufacturers. Maybe he could let database users fund all his public Jepsen work.
huh, you mean Factual